succession.
The beast's head flew apart, and his blood spurted over Olga. The shots brought Ungilak on the run. Behind him the other dogs scented the fresh blood and set up an excited howling. Ungilak took one look at the dead animal and turned his attention back to the other dogs. But it was too late for him to try to cope with them. The starving animals had gone berserk, and now the pack of them had pulled free from where Ungilak had tethered them and was making for the scene, howling and slavering as they came.
Ungilak grabbed up Olga and motioned for me to follow quickly. We moved away from the sled lean-to as the pack descended on it. Ungilak said something to Olga, and she repeated it to me.
'They have gone wild now, and there is no bringing them back under control. If there had been time, he would have taken the body of the dead dog and cut it up and fed it to the others. That way they might not have turned into such mad beasts. But there will be no holding them now.'
I shined the flashlight on the pack of dogs and saw just how horribly right Ungilak was. A couple of them had torn loose from the main pack, but the rest were still loosely tied together, and they kept getting tangled up with one another. They had thrown the sled over now and fallen on the carcass of the dead dog. They ripped out his insides and set about devouring him, flesh, bones, fur and all. Inevitably, two of the dogs got into a fight over a chunk of the carcass. Snarling, they attacked each other in a battle to the death. The other dogs circled them, watching warily. One of the fighting dogs managed to get a grip on the other's neck. The crunching of jaws was audible, and then he swung the victim around by his broken neck and flung him from him. When he landed, the other dogs descended on him and tore the body to pieces. Then they turned back to the winner of the fight. He was still weak from the battle, and they made short work of killing him.
With three carcasses to feast on, the pack became less savage toward each other. Olga and I both had to turn away from the awful spectacle of their cannibalism. Ungilak, however, seemed unaffected by it. He watched until they'd gorged themselves and then huddled together amongst the bearskin blankets we'd left behind to take advantage of each other's body warmth against the cold. When they were quiet, Ungilak spoke in a voice that was sad and very weary.
'He says now he must kill the dogs that are left,' Olga told me.
'But why? How will we ever get out of here if he does that?'
Olga exchanged some more words with Ungilak and then got back to me. 'He says it will be easier to kill them now than to wait until they become ravenous again. When that happens, he says, they will attack us with all their fury and it will be much harder to fight them off. They have had a taste of blood now, and they are no better than wolves. They won't hesitate to kill us after they have slept. So Ungilak must kill them first. After that, he will leave their bodies for food for us and go on by himself to the settlement to try to bring back help. He says the journey is too arduous for us while the storm continues – impossible without a sled and dogs. Our only chance of survival is for him to go for help.'
There was fear in Olga's voice as she told me this. I didn't like it any better than she did, but I could see that we had no choice. We had to go along with Ungilak's judgment. He was the only one familiar with the techniques of survival in the Arctic, and so his was the only opinion which counted.
I shined the flashlight beam for him just above where the dogs were huddled and watched as he crept stealthily up to them with his spear at the ready. I had offered to help with my gun, but according to Olga he had advised me to conserve my bullets. Still, I had the safety off and my trigger finger was tensed in case he should suddenly need help.
Once he'd reached his objective, Ungilak moved very quickly and surely. He straightened up, poised for a split second with his spear over the neck of one of the sleeping dogs, then brought it down surely. Its deathpoint went in and out smoothly, and then he moved on to the next dog. And the next. And the next…
A yelp of pain aroused the last three left alive. One of them, Ungilak's target, sprang up before he could plunge the spear to its mark. He lunged for Ungilak, and the Eskimo quickly shoved the spear out in front of him to fend the beast off. Now the other two came at him and I sprang to my feet, looking for a chance to shoot.
But there was no chance. The dogs were too fast. Their furious attack was a blur in the beam of the flashlight. I couldn't fire for fear of hitting Ungilak. Fortunately, the Eskimo was even faster than they were.
Fending off one dog with the shaft of the spear, he brought the tip down so that it gashed the side of a second dog. As that one started yelping, Ungilak's foot shot out and connected with the throat of the third dog. It fell back, leaving him free to club the first beast. He hit it hard and accurately, and it collapsed on the snow, its brains oozing out of its skull. Ungilak quickly finished off the second dog by plunging the spear-point into its chest. The movement left him off balance as the last dog attacked again, and they went down together with the snarling beast trying to tear off his fur-covered arm.
I moved in closer, but I wasn't needed. Ungilak's knee slammed into the dog's belly with all his might, and his arm was released. He brought the spearhead up to where he'd kicked, and it went through the animal's stomach and out its back. Ungilak got up and finished it off by stamping on its head with both feet.
The excitement was over for the night. Ungilak arranged the carcasses so they were shielded against the storm and indicated that we should all get some sleep. The next morning he left us, promising to return with help as soon as possible.
In retrospect, the days following Ungilak's departure are a hellish blur. I'm not sure whether it was two days or three when our food ran out and we had to start on the dead flesh of the dogs. I wasn't sure that either Olga or I could bring ourselves to eat it, but hunger finally drove us to it – although even then we ate sparingly.
It was right after that first reluctant meal that the storm changed into a blizzard. The wind became a howling knife cutting through the shelter provided by the sled. The cold was unbelievable now. It penetrated right through the furs we used for covering and it was with us all the time, growing steadily worse. Once every hour I insisted that Olga get up and join me in some exercises to stave off frostbite and keep our circulation going. I didn't tell her, but I had my doubts about how long this might work. Indeed, I had my doubts about whether we could survive at all, and they grew worse as the blizzard grew stronger and the cold increased.
Finally there was nothing to do but bundle together and share the mutual warmth of the furs. The cold still came right through them, though, and the only real source of warmth was our own flesh. Olga protested, the prissy S.M.U.T. fanatic to the bitter end, but I insisted that we take maximum advantage of this source of warmth. I forced her to lie naked with me under the pile of furs, and I kept agreeing to her demands that I wouldn't let anything of a sexual nature occur.
However, due to a defect in my character, or perhaps in my biological make-up – or maybe just because it's instinctive to do just about anything to keep alive – the night came when my body refused to keep the promises I'd made to Olga. By then the cold had grown so intense that it was necessary not only to wrap our bodies around one another, but also to keep up a constant rubbing of flesh against flesh, a life-saving friction, as it were. It was while this was going on that I noticed that a certain intimate portion of my anatomy had grown quite stiff. Half-crazed with cold and hunger as I was, I couldn't tell whether the member was frozen or merely taut with passion. But there seemed to be little feeling in it, and this panicked me. I had a sort of hysterical vision of it suddenly breaking off from its own weight like an icicle.
From this awful possibility, my mind jumped to a consideration of Olga. I remembered the first time Crampdick had pointed her out to me back in the brothel in New York. Was it a million years ago? More? No matter. Now I recalled how her pixie face and petite body had made me think she might be a gypsy girl. Little had I guessed that she'd turn out to be just the opposite of the uninhibited gypsy – a girl who'd rather die than part with a virginity she didn't even possess. I remembered how sharp and pointy her breasts had looked under her dress that day, and I marveled that while I'd judged their shape correctly, they felt marvelously soft – even warm – as they pressed against my chest now. I recalled how she'd looked later when I pulled her out of the brothel bed, and my sense of touch now confirmed the promise my sense of sight had made back then. That same sense of touch told me she moved marvelously well, moved with a naturally sexy rhythm that would have been perfect if only -
If only we'd been having sex!
I don't know how long my hallucinating mind dwelt on it, building the obsession. All I know is that finally I reached the point where I just couldn't take all this frenetic motion without following it through to its natural conclusion. Reaching down, I touched myself, and it seemed to me that there was less and less feeling in my rigid manhood., There was only one way to thaw it out, and I decided that it must be done immediately.
Still, even in my hallucinatory state, I remembered not to be a hypocrite about it. I pulled away for a moment and looked straight into Olga's deep blue eyes.
